


Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez: Human Exclamation Point

by Franzeska



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Video essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 12:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15534411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Why is Cougar so popular and memorable?





	Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez: Human Exclamation Point

password = losers

A while back, I was reading some of Destination Toast's meta that was using script breakdowns to look at how prominent characters were in canon vs. in AO3 works. That kind of script analysis is excellent for demonstrating how little narrative weight female characters typically get in canon. One thing it misses are characters who speak little but whose presence is felt keenly. (I would argue that these characters are almost always men, which just adds to Toast's point, but they're still missing from the analysis.) Toast suggested the possibility of doing an analysis based on how much the character is on screen rather than lines of dialogue. That would catch the Strong Silent Type protagonist who is constantly on screen, but it still wouldn't catch a character like Cougar. Cougar doesn't have many lines _and_ he doesn't have much screen time.

As anyone who has seen The Losers knows, Cougar is a scene stealer. Even amongst that fantastic ensemble cast, he stands out, and he's ridiculously more popular in fanworks than you'd expect from his screen time. Part of that is because of ship fodder with Jensen. Jensen's screen time and his popularity line up in the usual, predictable way. On the other hand, Jensen canonically has a thing for Aisha and has some fun interactions with Pooch, yet those ships aren't especially popular. Perhaps Aisha, Pooch, and Roque being black is why they aren't shipped all that much with Jensen, but Clay/Jensen is also rare. 

(BTW, if you're reading this because you like meta rather than because you like The Losers, check out the movie. I can think of a few canons that have all-black casts, but an action movie with three black leads in a mixed cast is seriously unusual. Also, I need some fixit fic for Roque. Just saying. A++ decision to take boring and shitty white Roque from the comic and cast Idris Elba. The Losers is one tiny strike against the tide of whitewashed casting. But I digress...)

True, Clay/Roque has way more subtextual support, and Clay/Aisha is canon, but based on trends in other fandoms, it wouldn't be shocking if Clay/Jensen had a following--and yet it doesn't. There are more Jensen/Darcy from MCU and Jensen/Eliot from Leverage fics than Jensen/Clay. (Yes, yes, Darcy!Sue, wah wah wah, but Darcy/Jensen makes more sense than Darcy/most MCU characters. You know it's true! Annoying horny nerds should be shipped! Uh… anyway...)

I would argue that Cougar is quite popular on his own merits, not just because of Jensen, and that this popularity is due to how the film is structured and edited. In scenes with heavy emotional content, Cougar often gets a reaction shot that shows the audience how to feel. When Clay reveals that Roque is the one who betrayed them, rather than Aisha, we see Cougar's reaction shot but not Jensen or Pooch's, even though all three of them are similarly close to Roque and Clay.

Cougar often gets the closeup that caps a big sequence in the film. The famous _Don't Stop Believin'_ infiltration sequence is 99% Jensen, but it ends on a ridiculously cool shot of Cougar. This is the most obvious example, but there are other instances all through the film.

While breaking down The Losers to look at Cougar's screen time, I noticed a number of things. There seem to be two major threads and two minor ones. Thread #1 is Clay's dramatic and sometimes dark story. Roque and Aisha are secondary characters in this. Both of them repeatedly get coverage that shows that they are not the POV character. (For example, Clay will have a closer closeup paired with more of a medium shot of one of them.) Thread #2 is Jensen's parade of crazy. It's like he wandered in from another genre to mess up Clay's movie with Bugs Bunny shenanigans. Thread #3 is the villains, who mostly appear in scenes separate from the main ensemble. Thread #4 is Pooch trying to get back to Jolene before she gives birth. Pooch is somewhat isolated from the Clay/Roque/Aisha scenes and from the Jensen scenes. I wonder if this is responsible both for him mostly being shipped with Jolene and for Pooch/Jolene being way more popular than other equivalent background canon ships of my experience.

Cougar appears with Jensen, but he is also used as punctuation for many different scenes. He often casts the deciding vote or says something that turns the scene in a new direction. The video above contains the vast majority of his screen time in chronological order. I have attempted to demonstrate how the film's structure makes him feel prominent even though he does very little.

This is an important example because it illuminates how filmmaking decisions can further elevate a character--and how they can do the opposite. Aisha is a great character, but her scenes with Clay firmly position her as the love interest, not as the POV character (something I'll explore in a future video). It's something to think about if we're making films ourselves or if we're analyzing the popularity of a strangely popular minor character (Coulson prior to AoS, Darcy, etc.).

Editing decisions have a profound subconscious effect on which characters we connect with. Cougar does not have major character lines. He does not have major character screentime. He _does_ have major narrative weight because his limited amount of coverage often comes at the moment when the film is showing us a reaction shot to tell us how the whole ensemble is feeling and how we, the audience, should feel. He has extreme closeups that other characters don't get. He gets key moments at the ends of major sequences.

It's not an accident that he's popular, and it's not just about shipping or about the actor's talent: it's about conscious decisions the filmmakers took to make Cougar seem important.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez: Human Exclamation Point [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18213908) by [podfic_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/podfic_lover/pseuds/podfic_lover)




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